Nation branding in the COVID-19 era: South Korea’s pandemic public diplomacy

Abstract

In a global pandemic, public health outcomes are not the only variables at stake. Also at stake are countries' nation brands and influence, which hinge on how a country responded to the crisis. Based on a case study of a middle power, South Korea, one of the more successful COVID-19 national responses so far, we offer an exploratory conceptual explication of pandemic public diplomacy that is grounded in a normative framework of substance, information, trust, collaboration, and mutual benefit. Sentiment analyses of social media and international news media suggest that the country is perceived as a model on how to cope with the pandemic by international audiences. Unlike other public diplomacy contexts, pandemic public diplomacy challenge conventional assumptions about public diplomacy and nation branding. As nation-states confront a common enemy, how public diplomacy and nation branding play out in COVID-19-arguably the most socially disruptive event in modern history-helps to shed light on the dynamics of mutual interdependence in an interconnected yet competitive world fraught with fear, uncertainty, and information deficiency.

Vaccine diplomacy: nation branding and China’s COVID-19 soft power play

“…Rhetoric alone cannot sell a nation brand in a pandemic, especially when it relates to a matter of fundamental import such as health. Given that factual basis (Kahraman 2017 ) or substance (Lee and Kim 2020 ) is fundamental to nation branding, a nation-state’s ability to project soft power in the COVID-19 context may be associated positively with perceived efficacy of its pandemic response but perhaps equally important is the nation-state’s ability to contribute life-saving vaccines—as International Public Goods (IPGs) —to countries who need them. Chinese vaccines, based on inactivated virus, do have a factual edge or substance; they do not require cold storage infrastructure for distribution (Hu 2020 ; McGregor 2020 ).…”

“…More damaging is the confusion about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines, with mixed results from different trials (Mallapaty 2021 ). Given that factual basis (Kahraman 2017 ) or substance (Lee and Kim 2020 ) are fundamental to nation branding, the safety and efficacy of Chinese vaccines likely impacted Beijing soft power outcomes. In a December 2020 YouGov poll of 19,000 people in 17 countries on perceptions of vaccines, China’s vaccines received the second-lowest score, tied with India’s.…”

Analyzing the practice of South Korea’s public diplomacy in Indonesia: An approach with communication pyramid of public diplomacy

“…At the same time, they used this situation for strategic Public Diplomacy. Its government and private companies gathered to aid Indonesia, a country with an exceptional collaborative relationship since over a decade ago, which has been poorly impacted by the pandemic (Lee & Kim, 2020). South Korea even pledged to provide $500,000 to support Indonesia tackle COVID-19 (Lee & Kim, 2020), creating an excellent national brand towards South Korea in the world's eyes, especially among Indonesian citizens.…”

“…Pradini (2018) even argued that this phenomenon would greatly influence Indonesia's political affairs, economy, and culture, which is positive so that the mutual collaboration between South Korea and Indonesia is well preserved. For instance, the positive result of the relationship has shown in South Korea's prodigious aid to Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic (Lee & Kim, 2020).…”

Public Branding and Marketing: Theoretical and Practical Developments

“…The U.S. response to COVID‐19 has been one of the least successful in the world, contributing to the country's decline in international reputational indexes, whereas the resilience of places such as South Korea and New Zealand has enhanced their brand (FutureBrand 2020). While the United States was mired in internal bickering, South Korea leveraged its soft power through nation branding to enhance its international standing by sending protective equipment to other countries and building internal trust through consistent messaging (Lee and Kim 2020), while New Zealand's strict nonpharmaceutical interventions spared lives (Robert 2020) and further strengthened Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's brand as a trustworthy, empathic, and competent leader (see Mazey and Richardson 2020). Thus, brands played a role in influencing governance processes in the pandemic, and in turn, they were also affected by those same processes.…”